Think Twice (Myron Bolitar, #12)

by Harlan Coben

You ever try edibles?” “No.” “That’s his problem.” That was Myron’s mother, squawk-shouting in the background. This was how they always operated—one parent on the phone, the other shouting color commentary.

Cecelia Callister, age fifty-two, a semi-supermodel from the 1990s, and her thirty-year-old son, Clay, were found murdered in the mansion where they resided with Cecelia’s fourth husband, Lou Himble. Himble had recently been indicted on fraud charges related to his cryptocurrency startup.

She wore huge sunglasses that looked like someone had glued two manhole covers together.

If he could go back in time, he’d rather have saved Brenda and never met his current wife, awful as that might sound. But that’s what he’d do. And the best part, one of the many reasons he fell so deeply and passionately in love with Terese, is that she would get that too. We are our mistakes. Sometimes they are the best part of us.

Win considered that. “Nothing ages you faster than someone else’s child.”

“You have no idea what we see at the law firm,” Esperanza said. “People spiral. They’d never act this way in person. But online? Not to get too deep into it, but social media wants eyeballs. Period, the end. The best way to get that? Divide people. Make them angry. Turn them into extremists.”

Fear and divisiveness offer engagement. Agreement and moderation do not.

“You have to go back to New York and, I don’t know, catch a serial killer or something.” “Even though you don’t like it.” Terese put her arms around his neck. “You tilt at windmills, my love. I’ve been the beneficiary of that. It’s one of the reasons I love you.” “The other being my prowess in the sack?” “Or your susceptibility to self-delusion.”

Your life is one thing before you have a child. It is forever something else after. Nothing is the same.